# Are Aliens Visiting Earth? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 25, 2020, 10:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-aliens-visiting-earth/912949 "2020-06-25T10:13:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![AlienBabble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alienbabble/32/3344_2.png) [@AlienBabble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlienBabble)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2021, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-aliens-visiting-earth/912949/242 "2021-05-15T04:14:34Z")
_60 Minutes_ will broadcast a segment on UFOs this Sunday. Here a teaser: > Earlier today, investigative filmmaker Jeremy Corbell released US Navy footage of a UFO: > ---
**Author:** ![AlienBabble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alienbabble/32/3344_2.png) [@AlienBabble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlienBabble)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2021, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-aliens-visiting-earth/912949/243 "2021-05-17T01:11:28Z")
60 Minutes segment on UFOs: > **[UFOs regularly spotted in restricted U.S. airspace, report on the phenomena...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ufo-military-intelligence-60-minutes-2021-05-16/)** > > Bill Whitaker reports on the regular sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP, that have spurred a report due to Congress next month. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2021, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-aliens-visiting-earth/912949/244 "2021-05-17T01:16:17Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The OP was suggesting we do otherwise. They raised the issue of whether “it is more likely that these objects are of an extraterrestrial origin rather than some classified tech?” I was saying the answer to that question is no. I would like to know why/how the OP eliminates the probable to arrive at the improbable. ---
**Author:** ![AlienBabble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alienbabble/32/3344_2.png) [@AlienBabble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlienBabble)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2021, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-aliens-visiting-earth/912949/245 "2021-05-17T10:53:05Z")
60 Minutes and 60 Minutes Overtime embedded for your viewing convenience: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/ZBtMbBPzqHY/maxresdefault.jpg "Navy pilots describe encounters with UFOs") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBtMbBPzqHY) [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/ygB4EZ7ggig/maxresdefault.jpg "Navy pilots recall “unsettling” 2004 UAP sighting") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygB4EZ7ggig) ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2021, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-aliens-visiting-earth/912949/246 "2021-05-17T14:15:00Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > > > The OP was suggesting we do otherwise. They raised the issue of whether “it is more likely that these objects are of an extraterrestrial origin rather than some classified tech?” I was saying the answer to that question is no > > I would like to know why/how the OP eliminates the probable to arrive at the improbable. I would like to know why @AlienBabble spams this thread with links, then doesn’t stick around to discuss them. And I would like him-slash-her-slash-them to stop. Actually, of course, I _know_ why they do it - to drive traffic to their crackpot website. Which I refuse to visit. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2021, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-aliens-visiting-earth/912949/247 "2021-05-17T17:28:30Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > > > Tucker Carlson believes in UFOs. > > You know, it is very hard to prove a negative. But you just did. This is 100% solid proof that UFOs are not real. UFO’s filled with ballots, millions of ballots, all for Biden…yeah, that’s the ticket…I would not be surprised at all if that’s where they’re going with this. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2021, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-aliens-visiting-earth/912949/248 "2021-05-17T18:10:24Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#): > > I would like to know why @AlienBabble spams this thread with links, then doesn’t stick around to discuss them. Because they are trying to drive traffic to their website, which looks like it was made in Flash in the 1990s and has around seven (extremely credulous) posters. ---
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2021, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-aliens-visiting-earth/912949/249 "2021-05-17T18:46:08Z")
I watched the 60 Minutes thing on the air, but not the Overtime part. It’s not long, so watch it if you want. It was _not_ about space aliens. The main theme was something along the lines of, “our government is so incompetent, we have these reports of strange things going back decades and they won’t investigate, even though it could be Russians or Chinese spying on us!” Marco Rubio says paraphrased to my perception, “the government has been lying to us or ignoring these things for years, but next month they’ll release a report that finally tells the truth!”, and we should believe the report this time, because? The reporter does ask lots of leading questions, “but if it’s not any technology we have, then could it be…” and none of the interviewees bite (at least in the aired part) and say “space aliens!”. The extremely unsatisfying part of the piece is that they don’t once take a skeptical view of anything. They assume the sightings are unidentified aircraft with highly advanced technology (probably of Russian or Chinese origin), and not anything else. Never an artifact of the scope, or a bit of debris close to the camera, a reflection in the water, or any of the other things that have been used to explain some of this. ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2021, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-aliens-visiting-earth/912949/250 "2021-05-17T20:24:09Z")
Perhaps it’s a combination of multiple stealth decoys that give the illusion of a single object doing impossible things. A visual component of a system that also incorporates bugs that they placed in our radar and FLIR systems. Something designed by the Russians or Chinese to test our systems response and give them an idea of how its working. They have been hacking into our systems for a reason. Perhaps they mean to fake us into believing they have something other worldly that in itself isn’t weaponized. Giving us a head fake while they do something else. ---
**Author:** ![AlienBabble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alienbabble/32/3344_2.png) [@AlienBabble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlienBabble)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2021, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-aliens-visiting-earth/912949/251 "2021-05-18T05:31:04Z")
Chris Mellon and Sean Cahill explain the rationale behind the push for UFO disclosure and research on CNN with Chris Cuomo. The technology displayed by the ‘Tic-Tac’ UFO “outstrips our arsenal by at least a hundred to a thousand years at the moment.” [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/azZ4XAZuVk4/hqdefault.jpg "Retired US Navy Chief explains tech witnessed in UFO aircraft sighting") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azZ4XAZuVk4) ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2021, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-aliens-visiting-earth/912949/252 "2021-05-18T06:14:00Z")
\*I haven’t watched the 60 mins episode, but will eventually. 60 mins is not known to be skeptical (not good for ratings, you see). But given that no alien or alien craft has ever been captured, all we have a fuzzy blobs of light. Anytime a fuzzy blob of light is credited with traveling 27000MPH, the chances are great that we are observing a blob of light, not protoplasm or green men. Mixed in with reflections are camera movements which can produce the same thing, whether intentional or otherwise. Add to human fantasies, stir, and mix. IOW, convincing evidence has yet to be shown. Wake me when it is.\* ---
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2021, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-aliens-visiting-earth/912949/253 "2021-05-18T14:05:58Z")
Given that the Voyagers are travelling through space at around 35,000 mph, and that their star system destinations are 40,000 years from now, I’d think alien visitors would have to overcome a lot of physical limitations to come to our planet. Even if their technology is more advanced, how would they overcome the speed of light? The Hadron Collider uses a controlled environment to accelerate particle beams, which have mass just north of zero. Little green men aren’t that little when it comes to the amount of energy required to accelerate them through open space, which doesn’t have the benefit of superconducting electromagnets. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2021, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-aliens-visiting-earth/912949/254 "2021-05-18T14:37:27Z")
> [@Knowed\_Out](#): > > I’d think alien visitors would have to overcome a lot of physical limitations to come to our planet. Absolutely. But bear in mind how old the universe is. Think of all the technological developments in the last 200 years. Now imagine a species 100 _million_ years ahead of us. They cannot rewrite the laws of physics, obviously. But a lot of things that we consider _practical_ impossibilities will be trivial for them. OTOH the ludicrous thing of course is the alien UFO hypothesis; that aliens have such amazing technology to arrive here, but neither make contact nor hide their presence. Instead they buzz around at comparatively slow speeds, in a very overt way, over many years. Pick a lane, ET. > [@Knowed\_Out](#): > > Even if their technology is more advanced, how would they overcome the speed of light? They don’t have to. As ridiculously big, and diffuse, as the universe is, there has been plenty of time for a sub-lightspeed species to emerge in our galaxy and visit every star (assuming they radiate out, not hop around one by one). ---
**Author:** ![AlienBabble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alienbabble/32/3344_2.png) [@AlienBabble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlienBabble)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2021, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-aliens-visiting-earth/912949/255 "2021-05-19T00:50:44Z")
Obama confirms UFOs are real and unexplained: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/xp6Ph5iTIgc/maxresdefault.jpg "Reggie Watts to Barack Obama: What's w/ Dem Aliens?") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp6Ph5iTIgc) ---
**Author:** ![eburacum\_45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum_45/32/3385_2.png) [@eburacum\_45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum_45)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2021, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-aliens-visiting-earth/912949/256 "2021-05-19T19:06:41Z")
UFOs have always been real and unexplained. This is not a revelation. Indeed, there will always be UFOs. Even when and if we finally meet aliens, there will be UFOs we can’t explain, and the aliens will have their own inexplicable sightings too. We can never explain everything; this is an inescapable consequence of observation. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2021, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-aliens-visiting-earth/912949/257 "2021-05-19T22:40:19Z")
> [@eburacum\_45](#): > > UFOs have always been real and unexplained. Yes, if your definition of “UFO” is “I don’t know what that is flying up there”. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2021, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-aliens-visiting-earth/912949/258 "2021-05-19T22:43:11Z")
Heh. Once it’s explained, it doesn’t need the “U” any more. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2021, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-aliens-visiting-earth/912949/259 "2021-05-20T03:42:47Z")
I was college in the early 1990s and sometimes hung out with some former Soviet students here in the US in those early years after the fall of the USSR. There was this one night when the travelling fair was in town and close enough that the top of the Ferris Wheel could be seen in the distance over the trees. I was walking along with this Uzbeki guy when he jokingly pointed at the Ferris Wheel and said “Ooofoe!” It took me having him repeat it a couple of times before I realized that he meant UFO, and for the first time I learned that there were people who said it as a word and not as Ewe Eff Oh. So which is it is your various necks of the wood? [![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLM0miIUmUk) (That clip has a softsub in it but for the life of me I can’t find a way to make it work as a caption. But the essence is that “ewe foe” sounds similar to “uso”, meaning “lie.”) ---
**Author:** ![74westy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/74westy/32/3950_2.png) [@74westy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/74westy)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2021, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-aliens-visiting-earth/912949/260 "2021-05-20T16:17:05Z")
The only place I remember hearing “youfoe” was in the [TV series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_(TV_series)). ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2021, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-aliens-visiting-earth/912949/262 "2021-05-20T16:31:07Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > I was college in the early 1990s and sometimes hung out with some former Soviet students here in the US in those early years after the fall of the USSR. There was this one night when the travelling fair was in town and close enough that the top of the Ferris Wheel could be seen in the distance over the trees. I was walking along with this Uzbeki guy when he jokingly pointed at the Ferris Wheel and said “Ooofoe!” It took me having him repeat it a couple of times before I realized that he meant UFO, and for the first time I learned that there were people who said it as a word and not as Ewe Eff Oh. So which is it is your various necks of the wood? In Norway it’s regularly pronounced much like Oofoe. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-aliens-visiting-earth/912949.md?page=12) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-aliens-visiting-earth/912949.md?page=14)